We’re in need of a great hacker. Someone passionate for learning programming languages, using the best tools for the job, and in general, getting things done. We’re generalists, and we expect you to be as well. On any given day you might implement a responsive web design w/ HTML5 + CSS3, explore a dataset with a reporter looking over your shoulder, or help make the servers swift.

Bonus points if you’ve got skills in…

Data science

Information design

User experience / usability

Maintaining high-performance web sites

Graphic design

Allow me a moment to persuade you

The newsroom is a crucible. We work on tight schedules with hard deadlines. While this may seem stressful, it’s got a serious upside. Every couple of weeks we can learn from our mistakes and refine our technologies. It’s a fast-moving, volatile development environment that will make you a better programmer.

Also, it’s a damned good time.

Find examples of our work at Maps & Apps. To get a feel for the full news apps experience, check our team blog. (Every team member is expected to blog their findings. We believe it’s essential to show your work!)

Gear you’ll get

One shiny, new MacBook Pro (or an iMac, if you’d prefer)

One CDM (Cheap Dell Monitor)

One comfy Aeron chair

…all at a desk somewhere in the Tribune newsroom, where you’ll be surrounded by reporters arguing with the cops, yelling about the ball game, telling crazy stories, and otherwise practicing their trade.

There is no free pop, pinball or posh cafeteria, but you’ll love your work.

You’ll arrive energized, and leave satisfied that you’ve done something that will make your mom proud.

During my first and only performance review at the Chicago Tribune, Brian asked that I take responsibility for cultivating two team assets: our testing methodology and our open source presence. With notable exceptions, I never made much headway on testing, but we have released a mountain of open source code. As today is my last day with on News Applications team, I’d like to take a moment to summarize what we’ve made and why it matters.

Of these, only beeswithmachineguns broke out of the News Applications circle of friends to attain mainstream recognition–an accomplishment almost certainly due as much to its cheekiness as its utility. However, despite not reaching a wider community, many of our projects have been successful in their niches. Here are a few examples of what’s happened to some of the projects we’ve released:

The IRE census application is the first major open source project sponsored by the IRE. To build it we worked alongside developers from CNN, the New York Times, the Spokesman-Review, the University of Nebraska, and USA Today. In this quarter’s IRE magazine director Mark Horvit hails it as a new model for collaboration in journalism.

csvkit has reached 82 followers, received commits from 10 developers, and appears to be getting traction as a key tool in the data journalist’s toolkit.

englewood and invar provided new tools for presenting cartographic data, a technique which we’ve since seen adopted elsewhere–not least impressively by our friends at Development Seed.

We’ve gotten feedback from journalists and hackers of all skill levels that our demos, tutorials and detailed documentary blog posts are helping them learn to do more with their data.

More important than any individual project, we’ve found ourselves in the midst of an exploding community of news-oriented developers who are hell bent on using, contributing to, and releasing new open source code. There are now more than a dozen active news nerd blogs–almost all of them producing new open source code. This works for our industry perhaps even better than it works in the mainstream web development, because, with very few exceptions, none of us are in competition with one another. We can share code with the Washington Post, ProPublica, or the New York Times at absolutely no cost to ourselves. This collaboration allows all of us to serve our readers better.

Thanks to the blessing of the Knight News Challenge, when I start work on PANDA Project on Tuesday I’ll be joining the lucky few who are paid a full-time salary to craft open source software. For me this is a dream come true. However, it won’t be the project I want it to be unless there is a community who is equally passionate about it. The PANDA project is by newsrooms, for newsrooms. I hope that you’ll join me in building a platform that, by being the sum of all our contributions, is much greater than mine.

Endnote: My job is open. It is incredible and wonderful and awesome and you totally want it. Send your resume to: newsapps@tribune.com.

We’re in need of a creative web developer. Someone passionate for learning programming languages, using the best tools for the job, and in general, getting things done. On any given day you might create responsive web designs with CSS3, stitch together content APIs, build snappy user interfaces with Backbone, or script backend Python or PHP.

It’s a job for a talented generalist, or someone who’d like to become one.

Allow me a moment to persuade you…

The newsroom is a crucible. We work on tight schedules with hard deadlines. While this may seem stressful, it’s got a serious upside. Every couple of weeks we can learn from our mistakes and refine our technologies. It’s a fast-moving, volatile development environment that will make you a better programmer.

…all at a desk somewhere in the Tribune newsroom, where you’ll be surrounded by reporters arguing with the cops, yelling about the ball game, telling crazy stories, and otherwise practicing their trade.

There is no free pop, pinball or posh cafeteria.

But, you’ll like what you do. You’ll come to work energized, and leave satisfied that you’ve done something that will make your mom proud.

We’re seeking an intern to spend the summer hacking in sunny Chicago, Illinois. As a member of the news applications team, you’ll work with the reporters and editors of the Chicago Tribune to gather and visualize data and build web applications for the lovely people of Chicago.

You should be a junior, senior or graduate student with programming experience.

(We love writers, but if you can’t code, you’re not for us.)

It’ll be fun. Also, educational.

Compensation (the rub)

The Tribune’s 12-week internship program is part time, 20-24 hours a week, and we pay $8.25 hourly. That ain’t much, so this gig is likely best suited to Chicago-based students looking for something more fun than classes.

(If you’re not already local, we can try to give a hand finding a roomie, but you might be better off arranging a sofa on which to crash. Perhaps this will present you with the opportunity to pursue that freelance project. Or maybe learn to sail. There’s a lot of fun to be had in Chicago in the summertime.)

Applying

To apply, email newsapps@tribune.com, and tell us why you’d like to waste a perfectly good summer working at a newspaper. Include your preferred start date and some type of resume-like rundown of your abilities and experience. Bonus points will be given to applicants with neat skills and/or a project or two in mind.

We’re in need of a creative web developer. Someone who understands the guts of WordPress and is not frightened off by custom post types, API integration, and writing your own plugins.

We won’t be prejudiced against candidates who’re relatively new to WordPress development if you can prove to us that you’re a great hacker and love PHP.

Bonus points to candidates who:

Cut tight, valid and semantic HTML/CSS and make it look *hot*

Have a history authoring and releasing WordPress plugins or other open source software

We work at a fast pace in the newsroom, and it’s hard to predict exactly what you’ll be up to day-to-day, but we can say for sure that you’ll be working with the news applications team and other teams at the Chicago Tribune Media Group to create and maintain local news and information websites.

…all at a desk somewhere in the Tribune newsroom, where you’ll be surrounded by reporters arguing with the cops, yelling about the ball game, telling crazy stories, and otherwise practicing their trade.

There is no free pop, pinball or posh cafeteria.

But, you’ll like what you do. You’ll come to work energized, and leave satisfied that you’ve done something that will make your mom proud.

In celebration of Chris’ first year as a hacker journalist, and as an encouragement to job seekers everywhere, I present to you the best cover letter I’ve ever read. Click through to read the annotations on DocumentCloud.